Pace

“ Ye shall love peace as a means to new wars—and the short peace more than the long.
You I advise not to work, but to fight. You I advise not to peace, but to victory. Let your work be a fight, let your peace be a victory! ”

“ The victory upon which you are entering at last is never the reward of the feeble, the cowardly, the faint-hearted. Out of your strength alone you have won your peace.
"But, O my brethren, while your land is now at peace, are you at peace? In the name of my Master, look each of you into his heart and answer: Is it not still a wilderness? full of the wild beasts of the appetites? the favourite hunting-ground of the passions? And is each of you, tried and faithful and fearless soldier that he may be on every other field, is each of you doing anything to conquer this?" ”

“ You ride ruthlessly through the plans of battle and campaign my textbooks show, and make sixes and sevens of them. At sight of you the heaviest lines of battle dissolve into thin air and into mist the fastest fortress falls. At the coming thought of you brigades and armies melt away, and your face stands out a radiant evangel of peace, the very thought even of wars and turbulences dispelling.... What am I to do? I cannot chain myself to study the science of strife when this heavenly vision is calling me—and it is ever calling—to love and love only.... ”

“ He said himself, one day: "What is there that can possibly disturb our peace? If all the world were in confusion, I should not be troubled; for what is all the world worth in comparison with peace of heart?" ”

“ Turn thou for us its darkness into light;
From harm and danger keep thy children free,
For dark and light are both alike to thee.
Grant us thy peace throughout our earthly life,
Our balm in sorrow, and our stay in strife;
Then, when thy voice shall bid our conflict cease,
Call us, Lord, to thine eternal peace. ”

“ Where I can fight for liberty and Thee.
Give others, God, the glory; mine the right
To stand beside my comrades in the fight,
To die, if need be, in some foreign land—
Absolved and solaced by a soldier's hand.
O Lord, my God, pray barken to my prayer
And keep me ever humble, keep me where
The fight is thickest, where, 'midst steel and flame,
Thy sons give battle, calling on Thy name. ”

“ But thou wilt say, ‘much peace have they who love the law of harmony and happiness.’ Thou wilt say, ‘this helmet is peace,’ and when they shall unite with thee and thy companions, war will end with them. ”

“ Rest thou assured that in this era of the spirit, the Kingdom of Peace will raise up its tabernacle on the summits of the world, and the commandments of the Prince of Peace will so dominate the arteries and nerves of every people as to draw into His sheltering shade all the nations on earth. From springs of love and truth and unity will the true Shepherd give His sheep to drink.
O handmaid of God, peace must first be established among individuals, until it leadeth in the end to peace among nations. ”

“ Now, if I, whose name is Peace, am a personage glorified by the united praise of God and man, as the fountain, the parent, the nurse, the patroness, the guardian of every blessing which either heaven or earth can bestow; if without me nothing is flourishing, nothing safe, nothing pure or holy, nothing pleasant to mortals, or grateful to the Supreme Being; if, on the contrary, war is one vast ocean, rushing on mankind, of all the united plagues and pestilences in nature ”

“ I light the white candle of Peace: as, in the Christmas story, Atawessu, the Star, the Creature Far Above, guided wise men to the manger where the Prince of Peace was born, so may the star of loving kindness guide all men soon to that ‘fair city of peace’ where children’s cry--like the song of angels, of old--shall come true and it may be ‘Fini,’ forever, la Guerre: good will on earth! ”

“ Could a message of peace more strong, more vital, more tremendous have been given to the world? To have satisfied the riddles of the sages, the dream of philosophers, the hopes of the ardent—to have allayed the fears of the timid the heaviness of the despairing ”

“ Let me have war, say I. It exceeds peace as far as day does night. It’s sprightly walking, audible, and full of vent. Peace is a very apoplexy, lethargy; mulled, deaf, sleepy, insensible; a getter of more bastard children than war’s a destroyer of men. ”

“ Our gracious Lord hath gathered here in one,
For all your foes and his assembled are,
That one day’s fight may end seven years of war.
XV
“This fight shall bring us many victories,
The danger none, the labor will be small,
Let not the number of your enemies
Dismay your hearts, grant fear no place at all;
For strife and discord through their army flies,
Their bands ill ranked themselves entangle shall,
And few of them to strike or fight shall come,
For some want strength, some heart, some elbow-room. ”

“ That great God who is the searcher of my heart, knows with what a sad sense I go on upon this service, and with what a perfect hatred I detest this war without an enemy, but I look upon it as opus Dei, which is enough to silence all passion in me. The God of Peace, in his good time, send us the blessing of peace, and, in the mean time, fit us to receive it. ”

“ And thus I came through storm to peace, not to the peace of an untroubled sea of outer life, which no strong soul can crave, but to an inner peace that outer troubles may not avail to ruffle—a peace which belongs to the eternal not to the transitory, to the depths not to the shallows of life. ”

“ Is it possible that you should not see, in this state of human things, a mighty motion of Divine providence? The most heavenly charity treads close upon the march of conflict and blood! The world is at peace! Scarce has the soldier time to unbind his helmet, and to wipe away the sweat from his brow, ere the voice of mercy succeeds to the clarion of battle, and calls the nations from enmity to love! ”

“ Let peace prevail; if not for ever, at least until rage, cool now, has had time to blaze up once more; until arms, stiff and sore with hammering skulls and splitting hearts, again renew their strength. ”

“ Gentlemen may cry, peace, peace—but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north, will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? ”

“ What calmness it must bring in the midst of conflict! what peace! what assurance of triumph notwithstanding failures, and losses, and the sad exhibitions of human weakness—the outgrowth of a fallen human nature! ”

“ If I fling myself about, in vain impatience, struggling, resisting providences, shirking duties, perturbing my soul, I cannot expect that the peace which brings strength, or the strength which brings peace, will come to me. It must be a windless sea that mirrors the sunshine and the blue, and the troubled heart has not God's strength in it. ”

“ And peace matters, the valley-spirit of peace, unprone to wander,
Unprone to pierce to the world's end—and past it.
And zephyrs matter, that never lift up a sail,
Save that of the thistle voyaging over the meadow.
[Pg 52]
And the lark—oh—the sunny lark—as well as the songless petrel,
Who cries the foamy length of a thousand leagues. ”

“ The path of duty conducts to the home of peace and light, be the way ever so full of thorns. Go only steadfastly forward, weary pilgrim, go, go, and thou wilt come to the holy land!' And I have gone—I have gone on through the long, weary day, for above thirty years ”

“ The men of those armies in the mud are bringing us water at the risk of their lives, the living water of peace, that peace which I think will be the peace that passes all understanding, peace to have our lives again and do our work again and be with our loves again. ”

“ The ruling classes may have fought for power, for territory, for a little earth, but the common soldiers fought for peace. And if they are with us to-night, in the darkness over land and sea, they are speaking that word into our hearts now, as the message of hope that will lighten the burden of the troubled world. ”

“ There is peace in submission; peace in abdicating the control of my own being; peace in saying, 'Take Thou the reins, and do Thou rule and guide me.' There is peace in surrender and in taking His yoke upon us.
And most especially the path of rest for men is in treading in Christ's footsteps. 'Learn of Me,' it is the secret of tranquillity. We have done with passionate hot desires,—and it is these that breed all the disquiet in our lives—when we take the meekness and the lowliness of the Master for our pattern. ”

“ When the present great task in which we have joined hands is really ended; when once more from the shuttered mad-house the figure of Peace steps forth and stands in the risen sun, and we may go our ways again in the wonder of a new morning—let it be with this vow in our hearts: “No more of Madness—in War, or in Peace!” ”

“ Strengthen him, O Lord; enlighten him, that he may overcome in Thy might the heathen and the oppressor. Give us peace, O Lord, we pray Thee; but if because of the wickedness in the land war cometh upon us, then give us the victory. Teach Thou ‘our hands to war’ that we may glorify Thy Name, and that the strange nations may do likewise. And over this household we pray Thee stretch forth Thine hand. Be merciful to the widow and fatherless in their affliction, and in Thy good time bring back the wandering sheep into the fold. ”

“ In the bluish air came the powerful exudation, the peace was the peace of strong, exhausted breathing, the reds and yellows and the white gleam of stubble were the quivers and motion of the last subsiding transports and clear bliss of fulfilment. ”

“ Ay! give us peace; though every moment we are off our knees we may be doing, thinking, planning, hoping that which will destroy peace, yet, Power that we invoke, heed not that, but, since we fall on our knees, and set it to music, and are for the moment in earnest—‘Give us peace!’ It is a cry common to all ”

“ Yet I am as far from all sight of humanity as before! Should the whole nation be swarming below the mountain, armies drawn up before armies, with my eyes resting upon them, I should not see them, but sit here in sublime peace. ”

“ Diminish their strength. Lay thy sword of punishment upon them that interrupteth this godly peace; or rather convert their hearts to the better way, and make them embrace that unity and peace which shall be most for thy glory and the profit of both the realms. ”

“ Peace, an immense security, was the promise of this service to the soul of man confused by emotions. And it appalled the soul that it would soothe and comfort. Its serene pronouncement, on every ecstasy of the senses, put the soul in fear. ”

“ Peace, white-robed and olive-crowned, has come to us who linger. Peace, with its cares and toils, peace, with its plenty and prosperity, peace, with its duties for to-day and its destinies for to-morrow. ”

“ For Peace, now, with open hands, bestows the blessings which War formerly compelled with iron grasp and frowning brow. The true compulsion now is to compel the world to have need of you, by the excellence of your service. ”

“ In all the years, it will be associated with glorious peace. Peace, 'that hath her victories no less renowned than war'; peace, in whose train are happy homes, songs of rejoicing, the glad laughter of children, the planting of trees, and the golden harvest. ”

“ O surely, reaving Peace, my Lord should leave in lieu
Some good! And so he does leave Patience exquisite,
That plumes to Peace thereafter. And when Peace here does house
He comes with work to do, he does not come to coo,
⁠He comes to brood and sit. ”

“ A different sort of peace emanates from her, a peace—how shall I describe it?—that reaches beyond the things of life, that enters into one and calms the nerves and heart, the peace of love and prayer. ”

“ Here again I catch the aspiration of our leader in war, “Let us have peace.” Out of peace will spring all else. Abroad there will be welcome and acceptance, with the might of our example constantly increasing. ”

“ Check thy joy for a moment, and examine, accurately, the nature and consequences of peace, and the nature and consequences of war; what blessings follow in the train of peace, and what curses march in the rear of war; and then form a true and solid judgment, whether it can ever be expedient to exchange peace for war? If it is a goodly and beautiful sight to behold a country flourishing in the highest prosperity; its cities well built, its lands well cultivated, the best of laws well executed; arts, sciences, and learning, those honourable employments of the human mind, encouraged ”